This is a LegalHack@OKCon 2013 challenge.

Every case is unique.

It is often difficult for a lawyer to answer one of the most pressing question of his client: What are my chances of success if we go to court (or if I plea non-guilty)? The challenge is to provide lawyers and clients with an accurate base rate of success or average amount for a similar claim. At the end of the day, the decision is always taken by a judge on the basis of the evidence and arguments in front of him. However, when you have a database of thousands of these decisions, you can start seeing trends and probablities.

Reference links and data sources:

• Law case databases like CanLii from Canada (also see Beta Site) offer exhaustive decisions from a certain court for a certain period of times. What kind of metadata would allow easily to compile such statistics?

Examples:

1. Criminal law: What is the success rate of a ““right to self-defense”” defense in case of assault? What is the average sentence? … How many cases go to appeal?
2. Civil law: What is the base rate of success for a criminal damage (dommage-intérêts) claim in case of property damages caused by a dog? In case of success, what is the average amount of criminal damage granted by the judge?
3. This information could help build trust between lawyers and clients; Clients could also take more well-advised decisions when it comes to “should we try to settle out of court or not” (for civil law cases). Also, it can be extremely valuable for policy-makers and researchers.

Suggested goals:

1. What is the success rate of a “right to self-defense” defense in case of assault? (in front of a specific court, for a specific territorial jurisdiction)
2. Identify metadata that could allow to seek this kind of information easily. Identify metadata that could allow a more granular research.
3. Scale the Hackday goal 1 solution to another jurisdiction.

(screenshots or sketches up here)

Brief description of your hackday results goes here. Add sections below if you need more room.

Include links to your demo and/or source code.

• Add any data sources you end up using in this project.

• Jean-Francois Ouellette

• Relevant documentation …
• Blog or forum posts …
• Tools you used …